This Is American Soccer, US Soccer, MNT, WNT, and MLS - Tackling the subject of Soccer in the US, and worldwide.

This week you read what ranks as maybe my favorite conversation I’ve had here at TIAS. It’s one thing to speak to soccer writing’s professional all-stars like Grant Wahl and Steve Goff, but it’s all together something different and special to be able to speak to a man like Greg Hamilton. Certain people, certain work, transcend the medium for which they reside in this terrestrial world. Greg, his film, his work, and his soul all qualify. To conclude our chase, after the jump Greg brings us up to speed on what he has been up to since we spoke last November…

Dear Adam,
I believe we last talked just before I was going to Leipzig, Germany for the Dok Leipzig Film Festival. I attended this festival and although I really liked Leipzig, I was a bit disappointed with the how ‘Mystic Ball’ did at the festival. I was hoping to arrange a Chinlone team performance in Dubai – but that didn’t happen. I went on to Myanmar and stayed for about 10 days to meet with the players and arrange passports for some of them. We’ve recently screened the film at the Oslo International Film Festival in Norway, the Whistler Film Festival in BC, Canada (where we won the ‘Audience Award for Best Film’), and the Chicago International Documentary Festival got us another ‘Audience Award.’
One major highlight was the World Indigenous People’s Film Festival in Alaska. Really great experience up there, we got the only standing ovation at the festival. I often bring a few chinlone balls with me to sell after the screenings, because after seeing the film, people often want to get a Chinlone ball but I know there is no where to get them. Spontaneous games broke out as soon as a few people had the balls. The same thing happened after the screenings at the Chicago Festival, young and old started playing with the Chinlone balls.
Taking the film around to festivals has been an profound experience on a lot of levels. The feeling of love and appreciation from festival audiences has sometimes been emotionally overwhelming for me. Finally in Portland I wasn’t able to hold back the amount of feeling inside me and ended up crying in front of the audience at the beginning of the Q&A – tears of frustration that the chinlone players in the film are not yet able to share in this love and respect coming from audiences and tears from seeing and receiving so much beautiful good-hearted energy from so many people (at the same time). It really is a powerful thing! And I think that when you grow up with a bit of a hole in your heart from not being able to live with your parents – when you sometimes come across unexpected family feeling, love and acceptance from strangers, it can give a sort of bittersweet happy feeling that squeezes from the inside.
Late May I went to Myanmar for the Waso Chinlone Festival – as you know the largest Chinlone event of the year. This year the festival was 40 days long – everyday non-stop. It would begin at 9am and go till after midnight – with no breaks at all. Team after team, all with live music and an announcer. The festival was great and incredible as usual. I only had 3 weeks to practice and get in shape for the festival, which is not enough time – I need at least 6 weeks of playing and training everyday to get back in shape and to able to perform well inside the circle (don’t forget, I’m playing with the very best players in the country!). This is always a period of serious agony, mixed with happiness to be back with my friends playing together, and embarrassment at how bad my playing always is after I haven’t been back for a long time.
The festival started and I had one difficult play with Su Su and her family team (her younger brother and sister and a cousin and a couple of cousins). Sometimes plays can be hard and not all the way in sync depending on the team and how much they’ve played together. Then another good play with Motta, Ko Maung Maung and some of the members of the Dream Team. One of the plays at the festival was definitely the best play I’ve ever had in my life. The audience loved it and of course so did my teammates. Everyday I was playing in a very beautiful and peaceful monastery. I had a group of about 9 or 10 monks who would come to the festival whenever I played to watch and give support. That was a really beautiful honor.
I got to play a number of times with U Si (he is the old guy in the film that comes riding up on his bike and I say “I wish I’d had a grandfather like him”). He is 85 or 86 now and still plays everyday. Every time he came to play, everyone would become super happy – especially the monks. They let me fully support him – that is really something because for someone like him or a little kid, your support has to be very precise. I don’t have words to describe the feeling of elation I got every time we played.
You know the Chinlone ball is weirdly painful if it hits you in the face or groin, even a light tap will easily cut open your lip. So of course you can imagine how much you wouldn’t want to bang the ball into an old guy’s face or groin. I’ve felt bad enough in past from kicking the ball into Su Su’s chest – which I’ve done way too many times! Funny thing is, whenever anyone gets hit in the face by the ball – everyone claps and cheers! I was puzzled about that for years and finally one day someone told me that it’s because the person was stupid and should have moved their face! They have a really good sense of humor. When I told some people that I was worried about playing on a team with really old guys because I might kick the ball into them – I was told not to worry about it – the old guys will like it! Good sense of humor plus really tough too – a good combination!
I went to Seoul, Korea for the EIDF Film Festival. This is an amazing film festival – all of the films are broadcast on EBS, the Korean equivalent of PBS. Each film gets over half a million viewers! I had people coming up to me in the street in Seoul asking me if I was the guy on TV! Not only that, all the films were free admission when they played at theatres! I received some great comments from people who had seen the film and sent in messages to the TV website. Here are a few of the good ones I’d like to share with you …
“We had a superficial understanding of Myanmar - just thought it is poor, and we thought this movie is very powerful because it shows us that there is something more important than pursuing capitalism.”
“Before seeing this film, I thought that power in the world is so concentrated in western countries - but I now found that there is a power which poor countries have and this power is expressed as the truth of love. I thought it was perfect - his passion and the content.”
“I think that there is an empty space in everyone’s mind, and there is an empty space between people and society. I think the director solved this problem through playing Chinlone. I wish the director good luck, long life, and to play Chinlone until he dies.”
“I think that if capitalism and limitless competition are taken out of sports, and in that empty space the beauty comes in, that can give us happiness and aesthetic impression. The sports which are familiar to us are all western. I want to find a sport like Chinlone.”
“I am very surprised that a game like this exists in the world of limitless competition … life sucks.”
They also made a Korean subtitled version of Mystic Ball that I now have a copy of.
Mystic Ball was at the Boulder Asian Film Festival in August, and just played at the Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival in Idaho.
Now I’m back home and just back from a 2-hour play by myself in the park (remember how I found the sport Adam? – same park!) – beautiful day and I got 32 mandala (the kick where you circle the ball as it bounces off your other leg). It was the most ever for me in one session. Pigeons swooping in formations and the odd, fine-looking woman passing by (should be more!). Old Chinese people stopping to watch, and of course kids; they are always interested when the Chinlone ball comes out.
It’s good to be alive. I feel super lucky to have a thing such as Chinlone in my life. Ecstasy, elation, pain, bliss, frustration, challenge, constantly pushing the edge of what is possible and the pure sweetness of feet, ball, gravity and grace becoming one. This really is another way of making love! I’m not sure if I ever mentioned this to you – I feel that I’m doing a kind of magic when I play. I think that there is something similar with the resonance or symmetry between the way the universe works – planets and stars orbiting each other, spinning and being affected by gravity – like the atomic model of electrons and atoms … and the way Chinlone is played.
That is part of the reason I named the film ‘Mystic Ball’. The truth is, and I guess it shouldn’t be surprising, that after many years of thinking about this – I still can’t find the words or terms to express this clearly. How extraordinary that something like this can be so playful and fun! It’s one of the things I most love about Chinlone – it has the same kind of playful, complete in itself feeling, that I see when two dogs are playing happily together. You know the way they automatically adjust to each other’s size, strength and speed – so the play is balanced and not a matter of domination. Wow, my heart is beating hard now just thinking of playing later this afternoon! To be able to frolic and play hard without any aggression and without anyone else suffering – is a kind of bliss. More of this kind of feeling, I believe the world needs badly. I think that our true and deepest nature as humans is to play – I mean why are soccer and other sports so popular? We somehow seem to be made for these kind of things – I don’t believe it is the competition per se, I think it is the ‘play’ - the connection socially, physically, and spiritually.
Coming up we have film festivals in Mexico and New Zealand. We are working on a distribution deal right now and also getting the DVD ready to be sold.
We just got accepted into the 52nd Corona Cork Film Festival in Ireland. Below is an excerpt from an email from the director of the festival…
“I should apologize for the delay in getting back to you, but the fact is we were somewhat swamped with entries this year, over 3,400 including 386 documentaries, of which we selected 30. I should say that of all the documentaries we viewed, Mystic Ball was by far the most pleasurable, a wonderful and beautiful insight into another culture. It will be an honor to include it in our program.”
I’m going to go over for that one, I’ve always wanted to go to Ireland.
As I’m sure I told you before, I’ve never played soccer. I love it though. So I’m not sure what kind of feelings playing it gives people. I hope it gives people the kind of feelings I get from Chinlone. Everybody deserves to feel this good, even if the moments are fleeting. I’ve worked hard, so they don’t have to be.

Ciao, Greg

—-

check out the film’s website, to learn more about chinlone, join the mailing list for updates about Greg’s journey, and to find out when DVDs will be available. And hopefully I’ll get my hands on some chinlone balls to give out to tias readers in some yet to be determined contest.